Don't smile, please

The Week - Last Word :: Sachidananda Murthy : "Germany is the latest of the countries to have said photographs on passports should be expressionless. Even if it is a beauty who can launch a thousand ships, like the Helen of Troy, she will have to keep her mouth shut and avoid the twinkling in her eyes. The German interior minister has described broad smiles as "unacceptable", however nice they are. These smiles can trip the biometric instruments which ensure that the face of the passport holder matches the photograph pasted in the travel document. Germans as a race have been much more serious than their more sunny neighbours in Italy and other Mediterranean countries.

In India, the passport office already has an informal rule to reject photographs where the teeth are exhibited through a grin or grimace. The passport officials prefer photographs which have a numbed look, like the pictures taken of those arrested by the police.

Altering facial features to escape detection is one of the oldest tricks of criminals. The notorious assassin Jackal, who kept the police force of 20 countries in the Americas and Europe on the alert, was a master of make up and could hoodwink immigration officials with an easy smile. Smart criminals have changed the colour of hair and eyes and shape of noses, puffed up their cheeks, made their complexion ruddy or sallow, or used moustache and beard imaginatively to elude detection. Recently a French court sentenced a 31-year-old who had entered a school posing as a 16-year-old. What was more amazing was that this chameleon had imitated a 9-year-old boy earlier.

In a short story by British crime thriller writer Dorothy Sayers, a London barber recognises the customer who demands a hair dye as a heinous murderer. As the killer is tall and muscular, the puny barber agrees to carry out his wishes and alerts the police after the suspect goes away. But the murderer is caught because within hours, his hair turns a brilliant green, and he is arrested on a ship even as he is demanding a barber to shave him bald.

Shakespeare, who had many smiling villains in his plays, laments in Hamlet: "...That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark." In the 21st century this seems to be true not only in Denmark, but all its European neighbours, which are banishing smiles from passports. Even countries which fawn on tourists like Thailand and give them instant visas on arrival, want the smiles to be switched on only after the passport holder passes the immigration barrier.

But the new rules would make it difficult for modern-day Jackals to sneak into foreign countries. Because the smile-less photograph would help a monitor to check the eyes and the shape of the ears, nose and lips. Biometric passports have been issued by the United States and Canada for their citizens after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Once the biometric chips are programmed to store the X-ray image of a skull, everyone's identity would be a skull with clenched teeth!

Each face is distinctive, though poet W.H. Auden had written of a character who said "my face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain". There are immigration and police officials who have a phenomenal memory for faces, so that even under a disguise, they find their wanted man or woman. American comedian Groucho Marx told an acquaintance, "I never forget a face, but in your case I will make an exception."

In India, Parliament has issued biometric identity cards to members, officials and mediapersons, so that even if the card is in the short pocket, the scanner recognises and flashes the photograph on the screen as the door traps open automatically. The exception is for presiding officers and the Prime Minister, who arrive with a huge entourage. Biometric cards are being introduced in defence and scientific installations, and in private companies. As an estimated 10 lakh Indians have to get these cards, this is a new business area for card makers. These entrepreneurs are convincing state governments, and public sector and private sector companies to go for biometric I-cards. Driving licences are getting smart chips embedded. All of them want to eschew the smile in the portraits that make these enterprises go laughing all the way to the bank!"